Greenland’s first prime minister, Jonathan Motzfeldt of the left-of-centre Siumut Party, died in the capital, Nuuk, on Oct. 28, 2010, at age 72. As a young man, Motzfeldt joined other Inuit activists who campaigned for the territory’s independence from Denmark. After Greenland gained home rule (1979), he served as the head of government from May 1979 to March 1991 and again from September 1997 to December 2002.

Oil drilling in the Arctic waters around Greenland began in mid-2010. Licensing agreements were delayed in the summer as environmental concerns grew in response to energy company BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (SeeSpecial Report.) In the wake of that massive spill, Greenland, which had secured self-government from Denmark in 2009, issued a demand that all companies seeking a drilling license pay an up-front bond to cover potential cleanup costs in the event of a similar accident. BP pulled out of the bidding on drilling rights, but other companies, notably Scotland-based Cairn Energy, remained. Although Cairn announced the discovery of oil off Greenland in September, it was still uncertain whether operations there would be commercially viable. A month later Cairn shut down operations for the season.

Across the world, oil drilling began in February in territorial waters off the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, despite protests from the Argentine government. Argentina, which maintained its long-held claim on the British-controlled islands, threatened to restrict shipping by requiring that all ships en route to or from the Falklands that used Argentine ports or waters claimed by Argentina obtain special Argentine-issued permits. British officials dismissed Argentina’s protests as irrelevant. Meanwhile, Rockhopper Exploration, Desire Petroleum, and Falkland Oil and Gas established offshore drilling operations in the region, which was believed to have rich hydrocarbon deposits. No proven commercial deposits had yet been found, however, and some exploratory deepwater wells were abandoned.

Caribbean and Bermuda

In April 2010 the U.S. House of Representatives approved a measure that would allow the citizens of Puerto Rico to determine their future relations with the U.S.; the measure was then sent to the U.S. Senate. Two referenda were likely as a result. The first, to be held probably in mid-2011, would determine whether Puerto Ricans wanted any change from the current self-governing commonwealth status with the U.S. If the majority of voters wanted a change, a second poll would be held to choose one of these options: statehood, complete independence, sovereignty in association with the U.S., or the current commonwealth status.

The Netherlands Antilles parliament approved in August an amendment to the Kingdom Charter, which governed its relations with the Netherlands. The change, already agreed to by the Dutch parliament, affirmed an October date for the dismantling of the Netherlands Antilles. Accordingly, on October 10 Curaçao and Sint Maarten joined Aruba as independent states within the Netherlands, and Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius reverted to being special municipalities. In Aruba’s oil-refining industry—the island’s main industry after tourism and a key employer—the government and American refiner Valero settled a long-running tax dispute in May. Valero agreed to invest $50 million to bring the 235,000 bbl-per-day refinery back up to speed and make a one-off tax payment of $112 million, to be followed by payments of $10 million per year.

The Anguilla United Movement (AUM), led by former chief minister Hubert Hughes, was returned to office in the February 2010 general election. The AUM won four of the seven elected seats in the House of Assembly. The Anguilla United Front (AUF) became the opposition by obtaining two of the remaining three seats.

The British Virgin Islands was lauded by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in June for having met, and even surpassed, its Tax Information Exchange Agreements obligations, which were designed to make it more difficult for offshore financial jurisdictions to be used as tax shelters for tax evasion. A study commissioned by the Cayman Islands government at the request of the U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office concluded in March that the imposition of direct taxation on individuals and companies in the traditionally indirectly taxed Cayman Islands would have negative consequences for the colony’s future.

The Turks and Caicos faced a tough year in 2010 when the interim government in March was forced to cut all public-sector salaries by 10% following the cancellation of a proposed $85 million loan from a syndicate of local banks. The cancellation occurred because of leaks of confidential information relating to the loan.

Bermudan Premier Ewart Brown of the ruling Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stepped down in 2010 after four years in office. Brown had survived a no-confidence vote in 2009. Finance Minister and Deputy Premier Paula Cox won the subsequent PLP leadership election and was sworn in on October 29 as the territory’s fourth premier since the PLP gained power in 1998.

Pacific Ocean

American Samoa’s economy deteriorated with the May 2010 announcement of 800 job cuts at the Starkist Cannery, which would employ only 1,200 people after the cuts. This followed the loss in 2009 of 2,100 jobs when Chicken of the Sea closed its cannery. Job cuts and reduced hours in the public sector were likely in order to allow the government to meet its budget, 80% of which was salaries. The government budget depended heavily on federal grant awards of $166 million received from 10 agencies, despite its high-risk status. Government plans to take over a local shipyard were thwarted in June when its operators were granted bankruptcy protection. American Samoa hoped to place at least 500 workers in construction work on Guam, as plans for the relocation of U.S. Marines from Okinawa, Japan, to Guam by 2014 were set to proceed despite uncertainty about the future of the Okinawa base. Meanwhile, 41 years after the last referendum, Guam Gov. Felix Camacho again raised the possibility of the island’s reunification with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

In the Cook Islands, Cyclone Pat destroyed many homes and hotels in Aitutaki Atoll in February. The dependency’s tourism industry gained a boost from the initiation of new direct flights from Australia. In a bid to capitalize on growing regional tourism, a cultural village to showcase local music and culture was opened on Muri Beach on the Cooks’ main island, Rarotonga. A general election in November returned a new prime minister, Henry Puna, a lawyer turned black-pearl farmer, and a larger majority for the winning party, which was expected to ensure great political stability.

Niue, which was hard hit by the global recession with declining tourism and the loss of remittance income from migrants, in October hosted the annual meeting of Pacific Islands Forum finance ministers, which boosted its struggling tourism sector. A more serious problem was Niue’s difficulty in persuading skilled migrants living abroad to return home. Despite these economic difficulties, Niueans collected $43,000 for victims of the September earthquake in New Zealand.

French Polynesia was again in political chaos, despite three recent attempts by France to reform the government. The governing coalition sought to replace its parliamentary leader in an election in April but mishandled the procedure and lost power to a minority party led by former president Oscar Temaru. The instability was not helped by corruption charges against veteran politician Gaston Flosse, who was convicted in June and given a one-year suspended sentence. Tourism, already hit by the global recession, was slammed again by an interruption in travel from Europe after the eruption of a volcano in Iceland and by the closure of two major hotel operations after years of strikes. There were growing environmental concerns about nuclear contamination of the sea as part of Moruroa Atoll, the scene of 30 years of French nuclear testing, was beginning to sink.

Indian Ocean

On April 1, 2010, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced the creation of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The 544,000-sq-km (210,000-sq-mi) MPA would include a “no-take” zone in which all commercial fishing would be prohibited. The U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia would not be affected. Chagos Islanders, who were forcibly evicted from the BIOT in the late 1960s and early 1970s, protested that the environmental protections in the marine reserve would prevent their return even if they won the legal case that at year’s end was pending before the European Court of Human Rights.

After the U.K. election in May, the new foreign minister, William Hague of the Conservative Party, and Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg, both of whom had previously expressed support for the Chagossians, indicated that the new coalition government would not change the previous Labour government’s plans in regard to the MPA. A U.S. diplomatic cable from May 2009 released by the Web site Wikileaks in December revealed that at least some Foreign Ministry officials were aware in advance that establishing the MPA would “effectively end the islanders’ resettlement claims.” Meanwhile, the U.K., which had indicated that it would cede the territory to Mauritius when it was no longer needed for defense purposes, faced a formal complaint from Mauritius, which denounced the U.K. for establishing a marine zone in a region where it was not a “coastal state.”

Australian officials reported that some 130 boats filled with asylum seekers were intercepted off Christmas Island in 2010. The influx of nearly 6,400 asylum seekers left detention centres on the island overcrowded as the Australian government struggled to process the backlog of refugees. In mid-December a wooden boat carrying some 90 men, women, and children foundered and sank off Christmas Island, killing an estimated 48 Iraqi, Iranian, and Kurdish asylum seekers.